Joy Preble grew up in Chicago, Illinois, listening to her Russian grandmother tell tales of the old country, most of which ended with the equivalent of “We were all very poor and it sucked so I came here.” Joy began her writing career at age seven with a Thanksgiving play that consisted mostly of the Pilgrim women washing clothes after a long journey. Since then, she has learned to give her female characters, and herself, better things to do. (Not that clean laundry is a bad thing. In fact, she likes it very much. She just prefers someone else to do it.) She is married and has one son and lives in The Woodlands, Texas, where-when she’s not teaching high school English (and sometimes when she is)-she continues to write.